Women in EU Multilevel Administration: The Europeanization of Member-State Bureaucracies

The European Union does not have an integrated, hierarchically ordered public administration (PA) but is governed by a multilevel administrative system. Formally independent national PAs are the main executors of EU policies and, in order to effectively realize EU policies, they have to interact across vertical and horizontal levels of the governance system. Thus, EU integration has substantially changed the functional demands on national administrations when it comes to EU policy execution. This chapter therefore asks if EU integration has caused changes in the positioning of women in national PAs. To answer the question, specific functional demands of EU multilevel administration are theoretically linked to images feminist PA theory formulates in contrast to the dominant principles of modern PAs. The observation that feminist PA images fit the specific functional demands of multilevel administration leads to the expectation that women’s leadership is more likely in EU policy coordination than in classic modern PAs. In a plausibility test based on original data from a central administrative coordination network and the two lead ministries in German EU policy coordination, the expectation is shown to bear fruitful insights for future research.